The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to an Internet service provider switchover system for multi-homed information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In many situations, information handling systems such as, for example, client devices, may be connected to more than one computer network in a configuration that is referred to as “multi-homing”. Such configurations may be provided in order to, for example, increase the reliability of an Internet Protocol (IP) network when client devices are served by more than one Internet service provider. For example, in networked systems that communicate using the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), client devices may select and use a default router device from a plurality of router devices in order to communicate through the Internet using one or more remote systems. The selection of the default router device from the plurality of router devices is made in response to router advertisements from the plurality of router devices. However, when a link between a default router device (i.e., that is currently selected as a default router device by a client device) and an Internet service provider goes down, the use of IPv6 communications can result in lost traffic. For example, in many situations, the client device will not be able to switch existing traffic from its currently selected default router device (that can no longer communicate with its Internet service provider due to the down link) to other router device(s) connected to Internet service provider(s) that are available.
Such issues typically result from IPv6 router advertisement standards that cause the default router device (which is connected to the Internet service provider by the down link) to continue to send router advertisements that declare itself as the default router device, along with the address prefix for Internet service provider. As such, the client devices connected to that default router device continue to refresh their default router lifetime information and Internet service provider address lifetime information that may be provided by the Internet service provider. Conventional solutions to these issues that utilize neighbor detection do not operate to detect the unavailable Internet service provider issue because the default router device link-local address will still be reachable by the client devices. As such, traffic continues to be sent by the client devices to the default router device, and ends up being dropped due to the down link between the default router device and the Internet service provider.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a multi-homing Internet service provider switchover system.